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Oct. 23, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
48:55
Ep. 239 - Running To Win vs. Running Not To Lose

The Blue Wave is reforming as a tsunami of leftist tears. Trump’s approval rating and GOP's economic score hit all-time highs. Meanwhile, Obama reappears to annoy us all. We will examine the difference between running to win and running not to lose. And finally, why the Left always seems to get Christianity wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The blue wave is reforming as a tsunami of leftist tears as Democrats fall behind in key midterm election races.
President Trump's approval rating hits an all-time high, and Republicans get the highest score on the economy ever.
Meanwhile, former community organizer Barack Obama reappears on the campaign trail to remind us all what an absolutely insufferable, narcissistic, hypocritical empty suit he is, all of which has the Democrats running safe and weak As the elections approach, we will examine the difference between running to win and running not to lose.
Finally, why the left always seems to get Christianity wrong.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
I can't wait to get to that at the end.
John Fugel's saying has inspired me to take on why the left always gets Christianity so wrong, or why it willfully misrepresents it.
We got a lot of good news coming out on the midterm front.
It is getting real, folks.
Silly season is over.
The elections are two weeks away, and things are really heating up.
You've got to see the side-by-side of our dueling presidents, President Trump and former community organizer Obama.
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Great news for the GOP. I'm waiting for a piano to fall out of the sky.
I cannot imagine, I can't really fathom how much good news Republicans are getting as the midterms approach.
Right now, President Trump's approval rating has hit an all-time high.
That's 47%.
And it's 47% according to NBC, Wall Street Journal polls.
We've seen other polls that put him on daily presidential tracking polls from more right-leaning firms that say that he's doing even better.
But 47% from NBC, Wall Street Journal is good.
Crucially, it's better than Barack Obama's at this point in his presidency.
It's tracking.
He's tracking a lot better than Barack Obama.
Now, this shouldn't make Republicans and conservatives too excited, because if Barack Obama was trending 46-47 at this time during the second year of his presidency, don't forget, he got absolutely clobbered in the midterms.
He got destroyed in the midterms.
That's the historical precedent.
But right now, the GOP has more going for them than just Donald Trump's popularity.
It's helpful because a lot of our local races now are just referenda on national figures.
But also, the GOP has the highest economic approval ratings ever, ever recorded.
The GOP has a 15-point margin on Democrats right now.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, it's 40-something.
I think it's 48 to 23 or something like that in terms of where voters place their trust for handling the economy.
Republicans way outperforming them.
You can tell that there's a feeling of exuberance on the right.
There still is.
It hasn't gone away yet.
So people are running hard.
The right is hard-charging.
The right seems to be running these elections to win.
I don't think the left is running these elections to win.
I actually think they're just trying to keep to their historical advantage and try to rely on that and be dependent.
It isn't working for them.
Just take a look at our two dueling presidents.
President Trump hit the campaign trail out with Ted Cruz.
You know, he had been a little harsh to Ted Cruz during the primary elections.
Called him Lion Ted, said some mean things about him.
So a reporter asks him about this.
Here's how Donald Trump handles it.
For me, he's not lying Ted anymore.
What is he now?
Beautiful Ted.
Beautiful Ted.
I call him Texas Ted.
Ted Cruz and I had a very, very nasty and tough campaign.
It was a very competitive, it was a very tough campaign.
Once it ended and we got together, and by the way, very late into the campaign, we laughed.
People were shocked.
I said, don't worry, it's only a question of time.
And then ultimately what happened, we fought it out.
The outcome was obvious.
And we have worked together very closely.
I like him a lot.
I actually like him a lot.
And he's a very smart guy.
He loves the people of Texas, which I do.
Look at that turnaround.
Is he still lying, Ted?
No, he's beautiful Ted.
What?
Yeah, I call him Texas Ted.
I thought you called him beautiful Ted.
Yeah, I don't know what I call him.
I like him.
The point is he used to be bad and now he's good.
I also love beautiful Ted because Donald Trump is very good at these nicknames.
And beautiful Ted, one, it's not an answer to lying Ted.
So I guess he could still be a liar, right?
Now he's honest Ted.
No, no, no.
He's saying he's beautiful Ted also because Ted Cruz has many wonderful attributes.
I love Cruz.
I did a commercial for Cruz.
I voted for Cruz.
He's not, you know, Fabio.
He's not going to ride in on the cover of a romance novel on a white stallion or something like that.
So I just love the image.
Oh, he's beautiful, Ted.
But what Donald Trump is doing here is pretty illustrative because we talk about the politics of personal destruction.
These are the politics, usually taken up by Democrats, but we've seen it from Republicans too.
It's when things are really personal and nasty and brutal.
This is something people are misunderstanding about Trump.
Trump gets nasty, he's boorish, he's brutal, he's savage in his attacks, but it's actually not the politics of personal destruction.
If it were the politics of personal destruction, he would take it more seriously.
But he doesn't take it that seriously.
He's going, he says, he's a liar.
Cruz is a liar.
He holds up his Bible and he lies, lies, lies.
And then now Cruz is fine.
He's come around and he says, yeah, look, it was a tough campaign.
What do you want me to say?
During tough campaigns, I say tough things.
And now he's good.
I like him.
Vote for him.
It's very clear.
He's saying that's just about politics.
It's just politics.
Don't worry.
This is not what you're getting from Barack Obama.
It's not what you're getting from any other politicians, really.
Really, these guys take it personally.
They stick with it.
Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail again to remind us all how extraordinarily annoying he is.
He's theoretically stumping for Nevada senatorial candidate Jackie Rosen.
He's really just stumping for himself.
Here's a quick clip, in case you missed it, which you did.
First of all, I want you guys to give it up.
You guys go ahead and take a seat.
I got a lot to say.
First of all, I have to say that I miss you too.
I do.
I'm not alone in saying I enjoy coming to Las Vegas.
I was backstage.
Fortunately, there were no cameras going when I was jamming.
That I want.
I want.
I'm here.
I can remember in my lifetime, and that includes when I was on the ballot.
When I walked into office 10 years ago, I do think it's interesting.
I just hope people kind of notice.
Folks like me, by the time I left office, and that's what I handed off to the next guy.
Now I'd like to bring up George Harrison.
All through the night, I'm in mine, I'm in mine, I'm in mine.
Even those tears.
I'm in mine, I'm in mine, I'm in mine, I'm in mine, I'm in mine, I'm in mine.
This clip goes on for two and a half minutes.
I've played you like 20 seconds of it.
It's all about me, me, me, and you're just, oh, good grief, get over yourself.
It reminds me that he's more narcissistic than Donald Trump.
And the thing about Barack Obama is he was a BS artist par excellence, but he would always keep that serious face.
And I think people really don't like that.
You know, Donald Trump is also a BSer, you know, from New York, but he's honest about it.
He says, oh, yeah, I called him a liar.
Yeah, that was because I didn't like him then, but now I like him, so he's beautiful now.
He's Texas Ted.
Vote for him.
That's not what Obama does.
Obama has to believe the lie because it's about him.
He can't admit that he's just engaging in politics.
It's so much more...
It's unctuous.
It's so much more disgusting when they do it.
He also doesn't talk about Rosen.
He talks about I, Me, Mine.
And he's rehashing all these old...
When I was president...
But he's fighting old fights.
And he is gaslighting Republicans.
He's...
Please, go to every single state, Barack Obama.
Go to every state, go to every congressional district, and remind us why we threw you and your entire party out of office.
He's even rehashing these scandals of his administration and projecting them onto Trump and denying that he ever did them.
Here he is.
It is not a Democratic or a Republican idea that we are not supposed to pressure the Attorney General or the FBI to use the criminal justice system to try to punish political opponents.
That's not how America works.
That's how some tin-pot dictatorship works.
That's not supposed to be America.
That's not supposed to be America.
I mean, that's how my tin pot dictatorship worked.
When I used the IRS to target my opponents, he used these agencies to target his political opponents.
First of all, we know that his executive agencies were spying on the Donald Trump campaign.
And we're getting more and more information about that day by day.
We also know that he selectively prosecuted his critics.
He sent Dinesh T'Souza to live with criminals for months and months because he made an extra donation to a friend of his in New York who was never going to win.
He broke a law that shouldn't be a law in the first place and a law that is virtually never prosecuted Or a crime, rather, that is virtually never prosecuted.
And Obama's administration threw the book at him to send a message.
Why?
Because Dinesh D'Souza made a movie critical of Donald Trump.
How about the IRS? I was a member of an organization that was targeted by the IRS. He used his IRS, his tax agency, to intimidate his critics on the right, to intimidate the Tea Party, to intimidate Tea Party organizations.
And he's doing that political voice.
I can't stand that voice.
I think we're all so sick of it.
Donald Trump smashed that with his guttural screaming Twitter voice.
He has smashed that political voice.
You hear him.
And it's just so fake.
It's so artificial.
And this guy is such a failure.
His administration failed.
It failed on everything.
And then President Trump took office.
Well, first the Republicans took control of the House and Senate.
Then Trump took office and everything got better.
And that's just what happened.
And now he's bitter.
He's trying to reclaim a legacy.
I actually forgot about him.
I kid you not.
I had not thought about this guy in I don't know how long.
Because his legacy doesn't matter.
It's been dismantled.
He systematically lost the entire country for his political party.
Probably a thousand seats around the country.
And now he's coming back stumping.
Good on him.
Please don't do it.
It's this hypocritical sanctimony that people are so sick of.
And he won't admit.
He's just stone cold about it.
Oh yeah, the DOJ. People shouldn't misuse the executive agencies.
But what about, well, no, they shouldn't.
Yeah, they shouldn't.
It's outrageous.
You know, talk about tinpot dictatorship.
First of all, what happened to civility?
Remember, they're always calling for civility when they're not, you know, throwing rocks through Republican congressmen's offices or harassing Mitch McConnell at dinner or harassing people at their houses or where their children sleep.
They're always talking about civility then.
He called our president, our sitting president, a tinpot dictator.
And he was always awful this way.
His attacks on Bush, I felt, were out of bounds.
His attacks on Trump are certainly out of bounds.
Let's call him a tin-pot dictator.
And ironic, because Barack Obama behaved in an authoritarian, autocratic way.
Much more so than his predecessors, and ironically, much more so than President Trump.
We've been told Trump is going to be an autocrat or a tyrant.
It just hasn't happened.
If anything, he has ceded power back to where it belongs.
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So with all of this, you've got the dueling presidents.
President Trump goes out in Texas.
He's holding a rally.
You've got a thousand people sleeping overnight to get in.
Barack Obama holds a rally.
Many fewer people.
Not nearly as big.
Orders of magnitude less big than the Trump rally.
What does that tell us?
I don't know.
President Trump is the sitting president.
He's a much better showman than Barack Obama.
We know the historic midterm advantage is pronounced.
Barack Obama in 2010 lost 63 seats to the Republicans.
That was in his first midterm after his election.
Bill Clinton lost 54 seats in 1994 to the Republicans.
That isn't nothing.
You know, Democrats only need 24 seats to retake the House.
Certainly history shows that they could do that.
And yet, this is an uncommon election.
It's an uncommon president.
It's certainly uncommon times.
Economically speaking, we have virtually no joblessness.
The economy is screaming right now.
The thing that you also got to remember is that, what was it, two years ago, almost to the day, the New York Times predicted with 92% certainty that former future President Hillary Clinton would be elected.
92% Hillary, 8% Donald Trump.
What happened?
It was a Trump blowout.
It was a Trump blowout in the election.
So these things can change.
The one reason that I... Obviously some of these candidates, because they've gotten angry and they've gotten mad and they've gotten stupid, certain races that Democrats should have won are now almost certainly going to go to Republicans.
I'm thinking especially of Heidi Heitkamp up in North Dakota.
But the reason I suspect Democrats don't really believe...
That they've got this huge advantage right now is they're not talking like they're running to win.
They're talking like they're just trying to keep whatever advantage they have and just play it really, really safe.
And that's not how you win.
Here's Nancy Pelosi explaining this to CNN. If the election were held today, the Democrats would handily win the House.
I could only speak in the present tense because you never know in another couple of weeks.
Look how she's hedging.
I mean, they learned a lesson after 2016.
You remember, the New York Times predicted 92% Hillary would win.
The New York Times had to apologize because they got that election so wrong, they actually had to apologize to their readers.
Nancy Pelosi isn't making predictions because she wants to hedge her bets.
I mean, by all political patterns, this should be a blowout for Democrats.
But it's not looking like a blowout for Democrats.
Also, I'm not convinced if the elections were held today that the Democrats would win.
I suspect if the elections were held today, Republicans might hold control of the House.
We'll see.
She's on the trail right now.
I mean, she is the leader of the House Democrats, and she's not using winning rhetoric.
There are these two differences.
When you're playing to win...
You are going hard.
You are breaking things.
You don't want to come in second.
You don't have anything to lose.
You have everything to gain.
The great example of this is the Trump 2016 campaign.
He was breaking all sorts of taboos.
He was running hard on immigration, which conservatives had been mealy-mouthed on.
He was running hard on issues of foreign policy, on issues of foreign trade, things that seemed a little taboo.
And he was going after them.
He was going after political correctness and he wasn't speaking in a politically correct way.
The example of playing not to lose, the idea of just playing as safe as you possibly can, is Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney's, well, listen, do, do, do, and I, and he's talking in all these long things that are very boring.
And he's constantly apologizing.
He won't go after the moderator.
Do you remember Candy Crowley lied?
The debate moderator, Candy Crowley, lied during the Romney-Obama debate, interrupted the debate, lied on behalf of Barack Obama to millions of people watching.
And what did Romney do?
And Obama's laughing.
He's sitting there all, go on.
Go on, Candy.
Go on, Governor.
And she's in there just lying.
And, you know, if Donald Trump had been there, can you imagine what would have happened?
He would have blown the roof off the building if she had tried to do something like that.
That's the difference.
Playing not to lose is not a great strategy.
One, because I don't think it works very well, especially now in our age of 4K televisions and social media, authenticity is really, really important.
Also, I don't think she can really rely on these advantages right now.
I don't really see that advantage playing out in the races where people are really drilling down.
And since Brett Kavanaugh, all of the momentum has been with the Republicans.
So what are they running on now?
All they're running on is rhetoric and civility.
Rhetoric and civility.
This is ironic.
There's a Democrat congressional candidate in Pennsylvania.
He was having a debate in a synagogue with GOP congressman Brian Fitzpatrick.
And this guy Scott Wallace told the Republican congressman to F off in the sanctuary of a synagogue.
But he said, oh no, but civility, civility, rhetoric, civility, rhetoric.
They can't even run on civility.
They actually can't run on civility.
Here is Jim Acosta trying to pretend that the Republicans are the violent ones.
I have to tell you, Don, when the president made that joke about Greg Gianforte assaulting Ben Jacobs, I looked over to the crowd.
There was one gentleman, a Trump supporter in the crowd, who was doing pro wrestling moves, doing body slam type gestures in the crowd.
So the crowd was obviously eating this stuff up, and people wonder whether or not there's a cause and effect, whether or not the president's rhetoric, you know, plants seeds of violence in his own supporters, in his own crowds.
You don't need the president's rhetoric to plant seeds of violence.
You don't see seeds of violence in the conservative side.
You see two presumably left-wing vandals throwing a gigantic rock through GOP congressional leader Kevin McCarthy's office window.
That just happened.
That story just broke.
You saw that hysterical man-baby screeching at Mitch McConnell in the restaurant saying, Get out of the country!
Get out of the home!
Please stop it!
You see Maxine Waters calling on Democrats.
She's an elected Democrat calling on her supporters to assault, harass Republicans in the street at restaurants where they live, where their children sleep.
Eric Holder did the same thing.
Hillary Clinton did the same thing.
Jim Acosta doesn't talk about that, though, does he?
So they can't even run on civility.
They can't even run on that.
And so they're running vaguely on rhetoric.
They're basically just running against the tweets.
They're running because they don't like Trump.
And I'm telling you, I have been on campaigns that have tried to run against the other guy.
I've been on campaigns that have just offered a negative vision.
They don't go anywhere.
They don't win.
Even if the candidate's better than the other guy, they don't win.
You have to offer a positive message.
You can ding them too.
You can go negative.
You can hit people.
But you have to offer them something.
If you're just running against the other guy, the other guy is going to win because the show is about him.
Everybody is talking about him.
No press is bad press.
If you just run him because he's a bad guy, who are you?
Why should I give you my vote?
You're just voting for him.
So they're making a huge mistake there.
The rhetoric thing.
It's the last refuge of desperate politicians.
It's playing it safe.
It's playing not to lose.
Say, Nancy Pelosi, why should we elect you and the Democrats to take control of the Congress?
Well, because you have to, historically speaking.
We're expecting you to, and I'm sorry you asked that question.
That's her answer.
She doesn't have an answer.
Because if you give an answer, you're taking a risk.
If you give an answer, you have to stand for something.
But she doesn't want to.
I think Mitt Romney tried to run the 2012 campaign on not being Barack Obama.
He was trying to run it on Obama's economy is bad.
I'm the other guy.
Elect me.
Doesn't work.
You've got to run for something.
They're not doing that.
Even these minor Democrat candidates, these Democrat candidates that we haven't been talking about, are terrible on their rhetoric.
If you want to talk rhetoric, the Georgia gubernatorial candidate for the Democrats, Stacey Abrams, they're just about to have a debate down there.
They released a photo today of her burning the Georgia state flag.
They got a photo of her.
I think she was in college.
And she's burning the Georgia state flag.
And what is this with the Democrats now of candidates running against their states?
You saw this with Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona.
She's running.
All those videos popped up of her saying, Yeah, I hate Arizona.
Man, I hope your states don't turn out like Arizona.
And that's why I want to represent you, Arizona, in the U.S. Senate.
Not a great campaign.
So, I don't know.
I mean, a Democrat political operative should take these candidates aside and shake them a little bit because we couldn't ask for more.
It's like when you get a gubernatorial candidate running who burned the state flag and you got a photo of it, it's like she might as well...
Take out a gun and start shooting apple pies in the American flag.
I mean, it's insane.
And they didn't learn their lesson.
This flag issue really matters.
People are very offended by this.
This is why people don't watch the NFL anymore.
This was a major issue.
Another one, by the way, that President Covfefe got right, which is it seems like a trivial issue to the people who are telling you to stop caring are the ones who say it's a trivial issue.
Well, if it's a trivial issue, why do you care so much?
Stop doing it.
Well, if it's a trivial, it's not.
It's a really important issue.
And so it's really hitting her.
And then, then she comes out with this.
This wasn't 20 years ago.
This wasn't 25 years ago.
This was just on this campaign.
Listen to Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abram talking about who her voter coalition is going to be.
But the thing of it is, the blue wave is African American.
It's white.
It's Latino.
It's Asian Pacific Islander.
It is disabled.
Yeah.
It is differently abled.
It is LGBTQ. It is law enforcement.
It is veterans.
It is made up of those who've been told that they are not worthy of being here.
It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented.
Yeah!
Wait, wait, what?
Wait, what was the last one?
You know, LGBT! No, yeah, no, after that one.
Documented people!
No, before that one.
You're saying that your electoral blue wave is comprising illegal aliens.
You know that thing that we've been accusing you guys of doing for decades now, and you say it's ridiculous and insane?
Your Georgia governor candidate just admitted it.
She said, yeah, we're going to round up all those illegal aliens, all the ones that Trump hasn't deported, and we're going to get them to illegally vote for us and put them in the government.
Yeah, yeah, is that great?
Woo!
Yeah, I mean, those guys, they would applaud for anything in her campaign office.
But it's really incredible.
A Freudian slip, I think, where you say one thing and mean your mother.
Because she's probably caught herself here and said, oh no, I misspoke or something.
That's what they really mean.
And voter fraud is an issue.
Don't let anybody tell you it isn't an issue.
There's a great book out by Eric Eggers on this called Fraud, which you should read all the ways that the left tries to steal elections.
So I don't know what this is.
Is this ignorance?
Or is this lawlessness?
Or is this both?
Either way, you've got a major Democrat candidate running on some combination of ignorance and lawlessness.
No surprise.
And they're projecting.
I noticed this at Politicon.
You know, all the time at Politicon, you would see these left-wing guys.
I was on this one panel with a couple left-wingers.
And they would interrupt...
Us, the right-wingers, when we were speaking, they would constantly interrupt, mock, cut in, interject.
And then the minute that you questioned something that they were saying, they would say, don't interrupt.
Stop interrupting.
We need to be civil.
But you were just the whole...
No, no.
Come on.
We've got to be civil.
They project and they gaslight.
I mean, it really is gaslighting.
When I saw Barack Obama, I started to get a little PTSD almost.
A little PPTSD. Political Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
It's not one that really affects your emotions.
You're just kind of like, ugh, gross.
Gosh, can we move on from that?
I thought that era was over.
And when Barack Obama says that they're politicizing government agencies, you just think, you did it!
And he looks at you stone-cold gaslights.
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't.
No, we didn't.
Who are you going to believe?
Me or your lion eyes?
Who are you going to believe?
Here, Dick Durbin is doing exactly this.
Dick Durbin, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Here's Dick Durbin talking to Chuck Todd.
Why don't you go after Republican leaders the way Republicans go after Democratic leaders?
I don't think it's a message that really carries the day.
Voters are listening for both political parties to say something other than a political squabbles underway in Washington.
Is that right, Dick Durbin?
Is that they don't want personal attacks, they don't want political squabbles in Washington?
Dick Durbin helped lead the character assassination into Brett Kavanaugh.
Judiciary Committee Senate Democrat helped lead it.
He was a leading voice, unprecedented character assassination, petty, disgusting, baseless slander.
And he's going there, he says, they've got to stop attacking people.
You know, we've got to stop these petty squabbles.
This is actually the only thing that they do that genuinely infuriates me.
Because I hate it.
Don't boof on my leg and tell me it's windy.
Don't do it, man.
Don't tell me it's raining.
I understand they have stupid policy ideas.
They have...
Some confusion about first principle.
Whatever.
That's fine.
I get it.
I get the ignorance.
I even get the lawlessness.
It's just that look in me in the eyes.
It's so disrespectful when they do this.
And I think voters do it too.
They're living in a fantasy right now.
They're living in a fantasy that they're conning people anymore.
Talk about living in a delusion.
Hillary Clinton was at an event.
She was introduced to As former Secretary of State and as the real President, look at how she reacts.
The second, who needs no introduction, is former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The real president.
She has become that meme of herself, the one where she's in a straight jacket, kind of looking all wild-eyed, and she says, "I'm the president!" I'm the real president!
And the guards say, oh yeah, sure you are, Hillary.
Yep, no, come with us.
Come with us.
That's what she's become.
They say, you know, she's the real president.
Now, a normal, civilized, sane person who actually cares about our republic would say, no, I'm not.
I'm not the real president.
I lost the election.
I wish I didn't lose, but I lost...
I'm not the president.
What does Hillary Clinton do to say?
She's the real president.
She goes, ah, yeah, she takes off on her broomstick.
This is a fantasy world they're living in, and voters don't reward fantasies.
They don't, not for long.
To quote George W. Bush, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice.
The point is you're not going to fool me again.
They don't reward fantasies.
They can sit there and Hillary can say, I'm the real president.
And Chuck Schumer can say, I'm the real majority leader.
And they can say that all day.
It isn't true.
It doesn't make it so.
Even if the Democrats retake the House, even if they get their historical advantage, they need to grapple with reality if they want to rebuild as a party.
This is a mission of mercy.
I'm giving them free advice.
President Trump radically reshaped politics.
He really did.
At least the political media.
At least political communication.
He went in and he grappled with reality.
Part of that is admitting that you're wrong in the moment.
Not that you were wrong 30 years ago, but now you got it right.
Admitting that you were wrong in the moment.
Donald Trump did this.
And it actually irked a lot of conservatives.
Because he said, oh, you were wrong about this You were wrong about this trade deal.
You were wrong about this war.
You were wrong about this.
It was pretty radical.
It actually was a real shaking up and voters rewarded that.
They rewarded a guy speaking bluntly and speaking directly and not trying to just make excuses for things that haven't worked out.
The Democrats won't do that.
They haven't done that.
What they're starting to do is they're conveniently admitting that they were wrong about certain things.
So they'll say, oh, well, yeah, the Clintons, maybe they weren't that great when it's only convenient for them.
I will give you the answer as to how the Democrats can rebuild.
But first, you've got to go to dailywire.com.
If you're on Facebook and YouTube right now, head on over.
If you're on YouTube, you know, we just hit a million subscribers on the Daily Wire page.
That's pretty cool.
I think our show is responsible for, what, 875,000 or 950,000 of those?
But Ben and Drew also contributed, I think, like 70 or 80 subscriptions.
And then Another Kingdom did the rest.
So that's cool.
But, you know, I'm glad.
Thanks to those guys for helping out.
And thanks to everybody for subscribing, getting us to a million subscribers.
Go over there right now.
What do you get?
You get so much.
I can't even list it anymore.
Me, The Andrew Clayman Show, The Ben Shapiro Show.
You get Another Kingdom.
You get to see it on Mondays.
It comes out on Mondays.
You get to see it if you're a subscriber.
You gotta wait for the audio until Friday if you're not a subscriber.
But you get this.
This is to prepare for the blue wave.
The blue tsunami.
You know, we have the Leftist Years Tumblr.
It's always getting blue waves.
There are always blue ripples.
Salty blue ripples going through it.
And as what we were told was going to be the Democrat takeover of the entire government, as polling shows that it's going to be more of a trickle, if anything at all, get yours now.
Because we're going to run out and then don't come knocking on our door.
Okay?
Don't come.
You're going to drown.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
They've got to grapple with reality.
They've got to admit that they are wrong right now.
What they're doing is this fake posturing.
I saw it today in the Washington Post by Richard Cohen.
He wrote this piece.
He said, I thought Juanita Broderick wasn't credible.
I was wrong.
Okay, you know Juanita Broderick.
We've had her on the show.
She says that Bill Clinton raped her.
I've talked to her.
I read her book.
If you want to talk about credibility, this woman's got it.
She's got people at the time that she told about this.
Her story has never changed.
Even NBC News admits her story has never changed.
She just seems credible.
She doesn't seem kooky.
She hasn't lied publicly about major things.
She did...
But only one time, the only sort of hole in her story is she once said under oath that it didn't happen when she wanted it to go away.
Then once the story leaked, she admitted it happened.
But that's the only thing close to it.
She's never changed her story since.
But Democrats wouldn't talk about her, wouldn't accept it.
Now, all of a sudden, we've got Cohen saying, oh yeah, maybe I believe her now.
He says, quote, I remember refusing to deal with Broderick's allegation because I simply chose to believe Clinton was not a rapist.
Clinton, after all, was one of us.
College-educated, modern, urbane, and not some hooded monster preying on strangers.
Men like that do not rape.
My position has proved naive.
Violence can be in the sexual repertoire of any man.
Sure.
He goes on.
I am no longer certain that Clinton did not rape Juanita Broderick.
Well, good job.
Good job, Mr.
Cohen and Washington Post.
Now that the Clintons are not only politically useless to you, to the party and to the left more broadly, But actually, now that the Clintons are a liability, now you're willing to stand up and say, oh yeah, maybe that guy did it.
After decades of flying cover for these people, after just two years ago trying to put this man back in the White House and put this woman in the Oval Office, the woman who smeared all of Clinton's accusers and victims as bimbos.
That wasn't 20 years ago that you did that.
That was two years ago.
You all were doing that.
Now you say, oh, you know, I'm starting to believe her.
Oh, great, congrats.
Let's throw him a party.
Wow, now you must be super serious.
No way.
No way, Buster.
I hear these things all the time.
People will ask, how can we unite the country?
How can we be civil?
How can we come together and unite and agree on this and this and this?
They gotta come to the table.
The left has to come to the table.
We don't kick their speakers out of college campuses.
We don't scream at them.
We don't even call them racist, even though many of their policies, in fact, are quite racist.
We don't call them evil.
We don't call them wicked.
We don't throw rocks into their houses.
We don't harass them in public.
You gotta come to the table, guys.
And if you're going to offer something...
Which is now a political convenience for you from actions that happened 25 years ago.
Give me a break.
Put up or shut up.
And don't boof on my leg and tell me it's windy.
Don't lie to my face.
Don't gaslight me.
Give me something real.
Until then, I don't believe it.
It's just not believable.
You know, speaking of Politicon, I got to meet John Fuglesang there, and I rather liked John Fuglesang.
He's this lefty actor-comedian guy, but he seems like kind of a nice guy.
He's dead wrong about many things, and this gave me the privilege or misfortune of coming across John Fuglesang's Take down viral Occupy Democrats video about how Republicans are fake Christians.
They're not real Christians because Jesus was a left-wing hippie, don't you know?
And it occurs to me that the left always gets Christianity wrong, always misrepresents Christianity.
Take a look at this.
We'll go through it point by point.
Wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to get Jesus of Nazareth to come back and run for president on the GOP ticket?
They can't pick a frontrunner anyway.
So wouldn't the GOP love to get behind a guy who was a peaceful, radical, nonviolent revolutionary, who hung around with lepers, hookers, and criminals, who never spoke English, was not an American citizen, A man who was anti-capitalism, anti-wealth, anti-public prayer, yes he was,
Matthew 6-5, anti-death penalty, but never once remotely anti-gay, didn't mention abortion, didn't mention premarital sex, a man who never justified torture, who never called the poor lazy, who never asked a leper for a co-pay, who never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, and was a long-haired, brown-skinned, that's in Revelations, homeless Middle Eastern Jew.
Of course, that's only if you believe what's actually in the Bible.
Boom!
Fugle saying out!
Boom!
Mic drop!
Got you, Christians!
Got you 2,000 years of the Catholic Church!
Boom!
Except it just isn't true.
So let's go through point by point.
He starts out, he says, Jesus was a peaceful, radical, non-violent revolutionary.
He's probably referring to turning the other cheek.
Jesus says to turn the other cheek when somebody slaps you and offends you.
What we see there is a personal humility and a spiritual defiance.
When somebody offends you, you will not let them control you, you will not let them degrade you, and you will not retaliate in some irate revenge.
You will have personal humility and spiritual defiance.
He is not talking about pacifism in a national sense.
He was living in an occupied country.
The idea of abandoning one's right to self-defense, one's national right to self-defense, or one's political right to self-defense, Would have never even entered the political lexicon of the times.
He also told his apostles to sell their cloaks and to buy a sword.
In only certain places.
When you're like John Fugel sang and you just point to certain places of the gospel, you can twist it and pervert it and make it look like you're looking at the Bible into a shallow well and all you see is your own reflection in it.
But when you look in other places, Jesus says, sell your cloak and buy a sword.
Jesus also says that he comes not to bring peace, but a sword.
How about being a radical?
You know, Jesus is radical in salvation, absolutely.
But he's not radical in religion.
He explicitly says he's not radical in religion.
He says, I have not come to abolish the law.
I have come to fulfill the law.
That we will not change one jot or tittle until the end of the ages.
Okay.
Then Fuglesang says, you know, Jesus hung around lepers and hookers and criminals.
Absolutely right.
You're right.
Jesus never once condemned individuals as deplorable and irredeemable.
Great point.
What he did was save them.
He also told them to sin no more.
So he hung around all of these people, but he didn't indulge in sin.
He didn't say, oh, you're perfect just the way that you are.
Stay exactly the same and keep on sinning.
He tells people what they sin.
He doesn't condemn them for it.
He saves them, but he tells them to sin no more.
He never spoke English, and he's not an American citizen.
That's true.
He was a citizen of his own country that was controlled by the Romans.
And actually, Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his mother was on the road to go register with the government.
That is a point that I think Mr.
Fugel sang missed, and it seems like the opposite of the point that he was trying to make.
But you're right.
He didn't speak English and was not an American citizen, which I don't think anybody has ever suggested.
Everybody knows he was Italian anyway, right?
Isn't that true?
Fuglesang says that he was anti-capitalism and anti-wealth.
Jesus doesn't talk very much about capitalism.
One reason for that is that modern capitalism didn't develop for 1900 years after the incarnation of Christ.
He's not anti-wealth, though.
He's not anti-wealth.
People mistake this all the time.
Money is not the root of all evil.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Being possessed by wealth, being possessed by your own possessions, that is evil.
That is a danger.
That will make it harder to get into heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
Absolutely.
But he doesn't tell everybody that he meets to sell all of their possessions.
He tells certain people who are possessed by their possessions.
Some other people, he says, go out and buy something.
Go to that fish and go pull a coin out of a fish.
And this also brings me to one of my favorite parables, the parable of the talents, also the parable of the hedge fund manager, which is when the master goes out and he gives three servants some money.
And then he goes away and he comes back after a time, and the one servant turned his money into a lot of money.
He invested it.
he got a good return on his investment.
The second servant made a little bit of money.
You know, he got a decent return.
And the third servant buried it underground because he was afraid of the master and didn't want to risk losing the money.
And what did the master do?
He took the wealth from the poor servant, the unprofitable servant, and gave it to the rich servant.
Because for he who has much, more will be given.
And from he who has little, even that little which he has will be taken away.
And then the master casts the unprofitable servant into hell where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I am not suggesting that this is a diatribe on modern economics.
I'm just pointing out that John Fuglesang is misreading the Bible and selectively quoting it to suit his own political purposes.
He says that Jesus is anti-public prayer.
This is because Christ in the gospel says, Do not be as the hypocrites, making a show of yourself and praying for the applause of men.
Go into your closet when you pray.
Go into the closet of your closet and hide yourself and pray to God.
Sure, that's all true.
You shouldn't be like the hypocrites.
This doesn't mean that you can't pray in public.
In fact, Jesus prays in public many times through the gospel narratives.
One wonders if John Fuglesang has read them or if he's just misrepresenting them.
I assure you, Jesus is not anti-death penalty.
The death penalty was the mechanism of salvation.
Jesus came in the world to suffer the death penalty and on that cross conquered death.
This is the central joy of the world.
The happy fall redeemed in the resurrection of Christ.
He later foretold Peter's death on the cross.
He also said, render to Caesar what is Caesar.
And we have St.
Paul writing extensively about how the civil government...
It has the authority of the sword.
It has the authority of capital punishment in scripture, which is inerrant.
This has been affirmed time and time again by the greatest doctors of the church for 2,000 years, and John Fugelsang has no idea what he's talking about.
Not scripturally, not theologically, and not as a matter of the writings of the doctors of the church.
Then Fugelsang says that Jesus was never anti-gay.
Yeah, sure.
Who is anti-gay?
Point to someone who's anti-gay.
Muslim terrorists who throw gay guys off of buildings in the Middle East, they would be anti-gay.
I think that counts as anti-gay.
Christ, he comes, he hangs around with sinners, he redeems mankind.
Now, what I think John Fuglesang probably is attacking Republicans for is defending marriage, defending traditional marriage against redefinition to include same-sex unions.
You know, Christ speaks explicitly on very few pressing, tangible issues in the Gospels.
There are a few things where he speaks explicitly, clearly, and one of those things is marriage.
He says it very clearly.
Man and woman were created.
They are meant to leave their families, come together, and become one flesh.
And what God has joined, no man can separate.
He defines marriage perfectly, and there's nothing hateful or unchristian about the way that Christ defines it.
Then Fuglesang says, he doesn't mention abortion or premarital sex.
He does.
He actually does do that.
He says, Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it would be better for that man to have a millstone hung around his neck and for him to be cast into the sea.
And throughout the Gospels, throughout the Bible rather, we hear God talking about knowing people before they were even formed in the womb, knowing about them before they were born, before they were formed in the womb.
St.
Paul writes about this, about being called by grace while he was being formed in the womb.
This is throughout scripture.
And just in case Mr.
Fugel-Lassang says, well, Jesus didn't say that thing from the Old Testament directly.
Jesus is God.
The Trinity, I certainly am incapable of explaining the Trinity here or elsewhere, but God is three persons in one divine unity.
So he who, as it says in the Gospel, as Christ says, he who has seen me has seen the Father.
Then he says he never justified torture.
Again, torture justifies us.
The torture of the cross justifies we human beings and redeems us and saves us.
He gets it entirely backwards.
Who would justify torture?
He uses the cross to justify us.
He then says that Christ never called the poor lazy.
Nobody calls the poor lazy.
Nobody does.
Some people on the right call lazy people lazy.
They certainly do that.
Or they call timid people timid or scared people scared.
Absolutely.
So does Christ.
Christ was offended when the Gospels couldn't stay awake while he was praying in the garden.
He's constantly speaking of endurance.
He's saying you have to endure until the end.
Can't be lazy.
Don't be lazy.
Christ speaks against laziness countless times.
And again, he casts that poor, unprofitable servant into the fire where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Fuglesang says that Christ never asked a leper for a copay.
Right.
Christ also never demanded that Caesar render unto lepers the labor of others.
He certainly never suggested that anywhere, and neither did the apostles, neither had the church fathers.
It's absurd, and it's ridiculous to make a shallow political point from that.
He says that Christ never fought for tax cuts.
That's true, but Christ paid the minimum tax.
He paid the minimum tax he possibly could.
He was asked to try to entrap him.
They said, will you pay the tax?
And he said, whose name is it on the coin?
Render to Caesar what Caesar's.
Render to God what is God.
Plucks the tax out of a fish.
And he also didn't fight for tax hikes.
And finally, he said that he was homeless.
Christ was never homeless.
Christ was in this world to save mankind.
But his kingdom is of another world.
And we're not homeless.
We're pilgrims.
And that distinction makes all the difference.
And it really tells me a lot of how the left, like John Fugel sang, misunderstand Christianity and misrepresent it constantly.
And there's this irony.
They're always telling us, you know, Christianity is a bunch of fables and old tall tales told to shepherds thousands of years ago.
And also, you get it wrong, and here's what it really means, and I knew everything about it, and Jesus was a great guy.
Which one is it, guys?
Pick a lane.
But the Democrats can't pick a lane.
We've got a lot more to talk about, but I'm running too late, so we'll get to it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you tomorrow.
The Michael Knoll Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Bory.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
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Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
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